Every year around Halloween I try to fill in the gaps in my Stephen King reading. I’d read a bunch of his books back in high school and in college, but then I lapsed for a while. So a few years ago I decided around Halloween each year I’d pick up a book I hadn’t read of his and read it for the spooky season. Over the last 10 years or so I’ve read the uncut The Stand, The Talisman, Salem’s Lot, The Shining and Needful Things. This year, I decided to finally read Christine. And since I’m reading the book, I thought I’d watch the movie as well, seeing as how I’d never seen it.

I was always fascinated by the idea of the story and was eager to dig in. I read the book first. And the book is actually a lot longer than I was expecting. The copy I read had over 500 pages. It’s typical early King, long on setup. But once you get past the halfway mark, things amp up considerably. But don’t take that as a disparaging remark to the first half. The fact that King takes the time to set up the concept and we get to live with the characters a little while, it makes the events in the end really affect the reader. You know and care about the characters, so the horrific events at the end hit you hard. Since King is playing the long game we really get to know Arnie and when the changes start coming you can really see it. Little events build up to bigger events until it all snowballs in the end to, honestly, catastrophic results. And I like the motivations and explanations of Christine here in the novel.

I really enjoyed Christine as a horror novel and a King novel. Is it my favorite? No, but I’m glad I read it. The next King book I’m going to tackle will probably be The Dark Half.

So after reading the book, I watched the movie. Directed by John Carpenter, who was originally supposed to direct an adaptation of King’s Firestarter a few years earlier but it fell through. After reading the book, I was a bit disappointed with the slightness of the movie. I get it, it only has like 2 hours to do what King did in 500+ pages, I totally acknowledge that. Carpenter’s directing is pretty great. The movie is shot fantastically. The car looks awesome. I love the burning car sequence. It’s just so relentless and horrific looking. Honestly, I’m a bit disappointed with how the movie answers the motivations of Christine. It’s different than the book and it just feels so…bleh. It was evil from the day it was made? Really? Huh. I didn’t love that, but I really liked the kids in the movie and overall I’m happy with how it turned out, but not surprisingly, I prefer the book.

Fangoria did cover Christine a few times. With several articles. The movie got a cover story in Fangoria #32 in 1984.

King’s novel would get a review in Fango’s Nightmare library a few issues earlier, Fangoria #30, in 1983.

It’s a positive review, for the most part, but the author uses so many metaphors it’s tough to really say for sure.

Fangoria ran the Monster Invasion column for years. It was a collection of rumors and up-and-coming news for movies, TV shows, books, etc. Most of the news revolved in some way around the horror genre, but it would occasionally cross over into sci-fi, fantasy, etc. Actually, many of the Fangoria family of magazines would run a similar column. One of my other favorites was Comics Scene’s “Comic Screen”.

Anyway, I combed through a few choice issues and found some neat news tidbits from within the Monster Invasion column.

Here’s an item from Fangoria 23, 1982. It mentions Stanley Kubrick’s next movie. He had directed The Shining in 1980 and everyone was speculating what would be his next movie. This says that Arthur C Clarke’s 2010, the sequel to Kubrick’s 2001, is on his production slate. That movie would get made, in 1982, with Peter Hyams as director. It also mentions that John Milius (Conan, Dirty Harry) just finished an original script that would be Kubrick’s next. I’m not sure what that Milius project was supposed to be, but Kubrick’s next movie wouldn’t be released until 1987, FIVE years after this article. And it would be Full Metal Jacket.

This one jumped out at me mostly because, as I write this, I’m reading Stephen King’s Christine for the first time. This article starts off telling us that Universal has canceled their plans for a John Carpenter directed adaptation of King’s Firestarter. Which I would’ve loved to have seen. The article then mentions that this cancellation may have been initiated by the poor box office returns of Carpenter’s The Thing! Which seems absurd now because The Thing is considered a horror classic. Anyway, the article goes on saying that Carpenter has another King adaptation in the works, for the upcoming novel Christine which, at the time this article was written, hadn’t come out yet. But we now know that Carpenter’s Christine would indeed come out the very next year in 1983.

A few issues later we get some followup on Firestarter. Universal is moving forward with Firestarter and Mark Lester was picked as the director. And that is how the movie would actually move forward. The screenplay would be written by Stanley Mann and it would be released in 1984.

Here in Fangoria #9 (1980), Fango is calling out a 3-D revival! They are hearing rumors all over the place of upcoming movies planning to use 3-D including Halloween 2, Creepshow, and a possible Friday the 13th sequel! Only one of those things eventually got the 3-D treatment.

Here’s a 3-D followup from Fangoria #15 (1981). Last time, they are speculating about a revival, this time they are talking about an actual revival of 3-D movies in the wake of the success of the comedy western, Comin’ At Ya!. It even predicts that studios should start cranking out 3-D movies very soon to capitalize on the success of this movie. They also mention that John Landis is prepping a Creature from the Black Lagoon remake and they hope he plans on using 3-D when filming it. And I would have watched the sh*t out of that. At the end of the piece, Fangoria wonders how long this 3-D revival will last after the flood of sub par 3-D junk studios will undoubtedly put out wears out the format’s welcome. It’s funny how Comin’ At Ya! is name dropped as the progenitor of 3-D success here in this article when NO ONE today remembers that movie. Everyone remembers Friday the 13th Part 3 and Jaws 3, but literally no one remembers Comin’ At Ya!

Here’s the final 3-D followup from Fangoria #32 (1984). The previous article is called “3-D Revival”. This new item is called “3-D Dead?”. Which pretty much sums it up. Fangoria, having called the revival, is now calling the death. They say the technology itself is the reason for the demise. It’s just not up to snuff. And all the crap studios put out with sub par 3-D just killed the format.

It doesn’t get much more 80s than mail order horror VHS tapes. And Fangoria magazine is rife with all kinds of awesome mail order VHS ads. Here are a few.

From Fangoria 21 (1982). Driller Killer! Snuff! I’ve never heard of Snuff. I’m going to have to look that up. Look at the prices. $44.95 for ONE tape (plus $3 s/h, of course). That was the sell through price! Before that studios used rental pricing and it was over a hundred bucks!

From Fangoria #23 (1982). An Unholy 9. I love that. A few gems in here too. The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Fulci’s Zombie. Man, that I Spit on Your Grave is a tough watch.

From Fangoria #54 (1986). I love the art on this Mail Order Nightmares! from Mail Box Video. Silent Night, Deadly Night is a classic. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Make Them Die Slowly, but it sounds AWESOME.

This is from Fangoria #49 (1985). It’s not a mail order ad, per se, it’s actually a call in phone order. It’s still a pretty great ad. I *totally* remember that Doctor Gore VHS cover. I never got to get it, but I remember it in Fangoria a lot and I think it showed up at my local video store.

As you may, or may not, know, the Nerd Lunch Podcast is winding down. We only have a few more months before it ends. Today, is the final installment of the Nerd Lunch Halloween Special. Our Halloween episode has a long and storied tradition, so let’s take a walk down memory lane and see all the previous Nerd Lunch Halloween Specials leading up to today’s final entry.

The next year, 2013, we did a whole month of Halloween shows. It was called BRUCE-tober and it celebrated the man, the myth, the legend, Bruce Campbell. This is the only time Jay didn’t join us for a Halloween episode.

Episode 249 – 2016 Halloween Episode
In 2016 we were joined by Jay and newcomer Will (aka @veggiemacabre on Twitter) to do a spooky version of our franchise topic Movie Menus. We were each assigned a scary movie and a fast food restaurant and had to come up with a themed menu.

Episode 316 – 2018 Halloween Episode
Last year Jay came back and we were also joined by my good friend Mr Michael May. We did a Sweet 16 of Movie Monsters to determine who is the best Movie Monster out there.

Episode 340 – The Final Halloween Episode
And that leads us to this year. 2019. This will ultimately be the final Nerd Lunch Halloween Special. I’m not going to lie, it’s a bittersweet ending. We are again joined by Jay as well as Robert Zerbe and we are doing a spin off of Movie Menus. We are all assigned spooky pop culture characters or movies and we have to build a restaurant from the ground up around our assignment. So we come up with the name, the building, how it’s decorated, how the servers are dressed, any onsite entertainment, and even a few of the menu items. It’s a lot of fun and I want to eat at all of these places.

And that’s it. That should be all for the Nerd Lunch Halloween episode. It’s been a blast doing these every year. I hope you guys have enjoyed listening.

Okay, here we go with the third week of AWESOME-tober-fest. Now I’m going to switch over from Elvira to a more general Fangoria focus and we’ll look at posters, pin-ups, interviews, articles and ads from all eras of Fangoria.

One of the best things about Fangoria are the Scream Greats posters. I showed you one of Elvira’s last week. This week, here’s a pretty great Ghostbusters poster featuring Slimer that appeared in issue #40 from 1984.

And just a few issues earlier, in Fangoria #36, they did a whole article on the ghosts in Ghostbusters.

So, I’m finishing out the first two weeks of Elvira with a review of Elvira’s second movie, Elvira’s Haunted Hills from 2001.

Like Mistress of the Dark, I had never watched this one, so with the surprise of actually liking that first movie, I sat down to watch this one hoping to also like it.

And I didn’t. It’s more of the same but not done as well. Elvira is Elvira. Double entendres abound. It feels like it wants to be something like Young Frankenstein, or, to be more accurate, Haunted Honeymoon. But the charisma of the cast (or lack thereof) can’t overcome the poor script and attempts at humor. I know this was made on a shoestring budget, and it’s lampooning old Vincent Price Poe movies like The Pit and the Pendulum (the poster for which even had the giant swinging blade on it) and The Raven, which I honestly haven’t seen. But it still didn’t land, meaning mainly the humor.

The sets for this movie were pretty great though. The giant castle, as a set, worked very well and had lots of cool elements incorporated into the design including a small hidden door in the side of the giant fireplace (sidenote: I love giant stone fireplaces in castles). And the overall story was actually not that bad, but this movie lives or dies on the humor and the humor just doesn’t work as well in this one as it did in the previous movie. It was so MEH that I didn’t really have anything I wanted to talk about more in depth by pulling out screen grabs. It’s just not as fun a movie as I wanted it to be.